Latitude E6510 Owner's Lounge

Maybe it won't show its stuff until your lay a serious computing workload on it. You may be more impressed by adding RAM and a SSD.

GK

 

Further looking at this touchpad issue, I just discovered the touchpad works perfectly while it is on battery power. When it is plugged in it does not work at all.

 

Perhaps a BIOS or Windows power profile or Dell ControlPoint snafu. Given the touchpad hardware can be powered and can work, it sounds like a software/control issue. I would review settings for above areas of concern. But given a new machine with software issues, I'm trigger happy for re-imaging... always seems to dispell those out-of-box gremlins and leave me with a solid system now made my own. I know, shouldn't be this way, but it seems to be so... the hardware tends to be remarkably solid and the software can suck. Run the Dell diagnostics for a good feeling.

GK

 

I'm looking to buy a laptop like possibly the Latitude e6510/6410.

-Has anyone had problems with heat, noise, or throttling particularly under load with this laptop?

This review said there were problems with these things:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-Latitude-E6510-Notebook.32410.0.html

-Also, what screen resolution would you recommend for the 15.6" display?
I am thinking of either the 1366x768 or 1600x900. I don't want the icons and font to be too small.

And how is the brightness/contrast ratio of the display?

-What are you general impressions of build quality like flexing problems, chassis strength, and keyboard feel?

-How many hours does the 6-cell battery usually run?

Thanks.

 

Oh god no. NEVER 1366x900.. I am already going mad with the lack of space of my 1400x900 resolution, when I heavy multitask. But that is fine... as it's a laptop, and I have a desktop. But 1366x900, the pixel and dot pitch is so large, text and everything is blurry. Trust me.. it look "OK", but put it next to any normal proper resolution for it's size monitor, or read text for a long time, you'll wish every minute that you picked the higher resolution screen. Trust me.

YES it's smaller compare (obviously - a lot more pixels for the same area), using a higher screen resolution with the standard eye to screen distance/position should be readable fine. If not, well, to me it's obvious you should see an optimist to make your vision is ok.

It's not like your putting 19020x1200 (1200p) screen resolution on a 12 or 13 inch screen. If you get what I am trying to say.

One can say it depends on you.. If you like things big, and don't care about real-estate... get a low resolution screen, if you want to maximize your work area, and have a nice sharp and crisp image that you want to eat (ok maybe not at that point.. it's just a laptop monitor), then get a higher resolution one.

 

I can vouch for the 1920x1080 screen. The text looks fine and isn't "microscopic" at all. It's very bright and sharp.

 

I did face heating issues with Nvidia Card. Returned it after 7 days and got one with Intel HD. I am happy with the switch as there is not heat issues now.

Initially I got full HD but that was too small as I am a developer and often connect to remote sites using RDP or VPN and the remote sessions with FHD were too small to work with. Also some of the apps are not designed to work with DPI scaling. So if you are a developer and have to use this machine for your work then I would say do not go with FHD.

Build Quality is solid and have not had any flex problems.

Thanks,

 

Another vote for the 1920x1080p. I'm half blind and I have no trouble reading text, because the clarity of even the smallest of font sizes is great.

Everything looks sharp and crisp. I love it.

Also, I have a quad core and I must say it sucks the 9 cell dry with wi-fi and usual mix of activities on the web. Even at idle it sucks a lot more power than a dual core.

I use my latitude as a desktop replacement, so I really don't care about battery life much. But if you do, I would highly recommend a higher end dual core than a quad core.

All your other questions are correctly answered here: Review Dell Latitude E6510 Notebook - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

By correctly I mean my latitude agrees with that review.

EDIT: Missed out on the throttling part. Well, I haven't ever felt the 720QM being pushed to its limit all the time to experience throttling, so no comments on that. Given that it will take a LOT before the processor starts panting, throttling seems a non issue at least for the near future, or if you have your processor maxed out most of the times.

 

I don't know man, I actually appreciate the FHD for code writing. The extra screen real estate is worth its weight in gold. On my old 15" HP (1280x800), reducing the font size to accommodate more code on screen made it look crappy. On this I can accommodate a LOT more code.

And reading pdfs, my god does it look glorious?!

I'm wondering which clients RDP/VPN you were having trouble scaling?

 

I'm considering just a clean reinstall -

The reinstallation of DCP was strange, so now it's 2 different utilities - Sys manager and secur. manager instead of being united under dell.controlpoint.exe

Second, it would just make for a cleaner machine. I have lots of left over scrap files from installations of drivers when I initially tried to overwrite instead of clean installing them.

3 questions -

1) is this advisable?

2) It came with a DVD codec & Roxio; I like these and want to keep them but am afraid of losing it when (if) I reinstall. How to keep these utilities?

3) I can only find the DCP individual utilities - I ironically grew fond of the utility b/c it kept them in one place and the power plans actually made for pretty good battery usage. Anyone know where to find it?

edit - where did my ambient light sensor go?